Located in Long Beach, Makino Right Thousand Households Station, the platform is crowded, and there are flag soldiers riding horses in the distance and holding up several red cards in a spear posture.

The two sturdy horses snorted uneasily on the tracks, and from time to time they looked back at the stupid humans beside the carriage with heavier cargo hanging on the back of their butts.

Chen Mu's discovery came from his mind stuck in a fixed cycle of thinking, he always thought that the railroad track was similar to the wooden rail, but the passing state was better than the dirt road, but he forgot that the wooden carriage resistance of the iron wheel and the concave carriage track of the rail was much smaller than that on the wooden rail.

In addition to Chen Mu on the railway platform, there are also Zhao Shizhen, the world's first mechanical unit that crossed the equator with beef and did not rot, Yang Zhaolong of Muye Zhixian County, and Li Yuxi from Hexingsheng Company.

They are testing the ability of two horses to pull cargo on railroad tracks.

Yang Zhaolong now also has the appearance of a magistrate, wearing official uniforms all day long and shuttling around Muye to various tribes.

His county government had already been repaired, but there were almost no aboriginal settlements around the county government except for his subordinates, so he often rode horses and boats from this tribe to the next tribe to 'handle government affairs'...... The local people didn't need him as an explorer to handle government affairs, and the tribal chiefs could solve almost all the problems of the aborigines.

He was probably the hardest-working but least serious magistrate in North Asia, and the most important thing he handled was to help the chiefs get a little more equal return in the tobacco trade of the Ming merchant Li Yuxi.

Li Yuxi's company allowed all the coastal tribes to grow tobacco to a greater or lesser extent, while Yang Zhaolong, the magistrate, controlled the pricing power for all the tobacco along the coast from Quebec to the Florida peninsula.

The price of tobacco here is 9,400 Tongbao per 100 catties, but the Oriental Military Government is not allowed to go to sea raw tobacco, only the processed baked cigarettes are allowed to go out of the customs, 20 cigarettes are a pack, in the cigarette factory of Makino, 100 catties of tobacco can make 1,000 packs of cigarettes named 'Daming Muye', the cost is 32 Tongbao per pack, and the price is 88 Tongbao.

Needless to say, this is Chen Mu's idea, he has both ideas and policies, and in the whole of Asia, there is nothing he wants to do but can't do.

He not only instructed Li Yuxi to set up a flue-cured cigarette factory, but also set the price of cigarettes, and even formulated the tax standard for the export of cigarettes by the Oriental Military Government.

When going to sea, each package is taxed at 88 tongbao.

In this item alone, since Makino established the county in July last year, Li Yuxi has gone to sea with a total of more than 360,000 bags of tobacco and paid more than 42 million tongbao to the Dongyang Military Government, worth more than 35,000 taels of silver.

The greatest power in the hands of Yang Zhaolong of Muye Zhixian County is to give some concessions to the tobacco farmers under his rule, that is, the chiefs and subordinates of the coastal tribes on the purchase price of tobacco, and the tax of 200 tongbao per 100 catties can be handed over by him to the tribal chiefs who meet his wishes as a reward.

This is where most of Makino Prefecture's dominion over the land comes from.

Tobacco is a thing that hardly needs land conditions, and it doesn't need any agricultural technology to take care of it, which is very trouble-free, and it is normal to harvest one or two hundred catties of dry tobacco leaves per acre, and Li Yuxi's 360,000 bags are not all the tobacco production capacity of Muye County, or even less than one-tenth.

The production of the cigarette factory is not the reason for restricting his production, the real reason comes from the fact that this is the first time to dump tobacco in Europe, and he feels uncertain about Chen Mu's pricing in his heart, and he doesn't know if he can sell it.

Li Yuxi came to see Chen Muzheng this time for this matter, the ship he sent to Spain was sold short in less than two hours after docking in the port of Daming in Seville, and he didn't even leave the goods in the pockets of the sailors, and he didn't even need his people to carry them, and the Spanish merchants under Li Dan in Daming Port were extremely enthusiastic about all the goods from Daming.

Li Yuxi said: "The goods are sold by the box, and the bow of the grass people has never seen such a battle, and no one even asks what the box contains, only asks how many Tongbao is in a box, and after hearing that a box is only 150,000 Tongbao, he paid for it and brought someone to move the goods from the ship...... From beginning to end, they didn't open it. ”

"The bow said they could sell it at that price even if they put stones in the box."

Chen Mu looked at the workers not far away who were adding a second truck carrying 600 catties to the back of the carriage, slowly bowed his head, nodded and said: "Your goods may be the cheapest Daming goods they have ever seen, after all, a box of silk or porcelain is much cheaper than this, it seems that Dan'er did a good job with Tongbao over there, and they finally settled with Tongbao, or did they use half a tael?" ”

"Tongbao, they gave me Tongbao, I used Tongbao to exchange half a tael to Governor Li, and Governor Li gave me two and a half taels of money, one is mine, and the other is Daming Port to be transported back to North Asia."

The more mature the trade routes, the more money will be made from collecting taxes, Chen Mu nodded and asked, "How many packets of Muye tobacco are in a box?" I've made a lot of money. ”

Li Yuxi knew that Chen Muhui would ask him how much money he had earned, and in his understanding, the main job of this Oriental minister was not to open up the Great Orient, but to make money overseas for the imperial court.

Otherwise, what would he do when he set up a company? It's not to urge businessmen to make profits overseas.

He arched his hand and said: "Thanks to the blessing of the handsome, I have indeed earned a lot." A box of 300 bags, Governor Li's side collects a tax of 30,000 Tongbao per box, excluding the cost of a box to earn nearly 80,000 Tongbao, a lucky ship with 300 boxes, and a net income of more than 19,000 taels in addition to manpower. ”

"The ship that was shipped to France is not in good condition, because Xiao Chen Shuai is fighting there, not to mention that we still have a warship, and the royal family is not allowed to dock, so we have not returned to the Netherlands; The 300 boxes to England were not sold as fast as in Spain, but they were also sold out on the third day of docking. ”

"In this way, Caomin's cigarette factory can be expanded and fully produced, and the budget is for the Toyo military government to hire 4,000 people to work, and next year it plans to go to sea with 30 ships and 12,000 boxes...... This time, I came to see the marshal, just to ask what grass people can do for the military government. ”

Chen Mu squinted his eyes and smiled, before going to sea for the first time, Li Yuxi complained to others that the taxes of the Oriental Military Government were too dark, saying that he couldn't even earn back the taxes after collecting taxes and going to sea like this.

Now with such great enthusiasm, Li Dan also collects a tax of 100 tongbao per package, and he can still earn nearly 300 tongbao.

It seems that such a huge profit makes Li Yuxi a little panicked.

"Don't be afraid, as long as you abide by the laws of the military government, the minimum wage standard for each worker and the minimum purchase price of tobacco, and do not do anything that harms the people, you are a legitimate businessman of the Ming Dynasty, and the Siyang Military Government is your solid backing for being invincible in the world."

Chen Mu smiled and said: "But if you want to say what you can do, I do have something you can help with, see that this track is not, the length of the rails, the straightness is different, each zhang weighs one hundred and ninety-eight pounds, we want to build the Muhe Railway for nearly five hundred miles, thousands of miles back and forth, four rails, you calculate first." ”

As he spoke, he saw that Yang Zhaolong had returned from a distance, so he left Li Yuxi and asked Yang Zhaolong, "How is it?" ”

"Brother-in-law, a car with a load of 600 catties can walk 22 miles of Long Beach in half an hour; Pulling two 600-pound cars, the same can be completed in half an hour, but it is tired. ”

"Resistance, because there is much less resistance." Chen Mu nodded and said: "If the car is made of a hook with a thick steel spring between the car, you can pull one first, and the first one will hardly be wasted when it moves, and the pull will continue to pull the second car, which is more labor-saving." ”

"Change horses and continue to try three cars." After he finished speaking to Yang Zhaolong, he turned his head and continued to say to Li Yuxi: "The military government only has forty Dajian furnaces on the shore of Lake Ontario, with an annual output of 17.24 million catties of wrought iron, and to maintain this output, the iron-making furnaces must be dismantled or overhauled every 45 days; And such a capacity is not enough to support the needs of the completion of the Muhe Railway within three years. ”

"Can you solve the expansion of the ironworks and the repair of the old iron-making furnaces?"

When Chen Mu said this, although he was smiling on his face, he was a little embarrassed in his heart.

Because he suddenly discovered that the construction of this railway required the cost of hiring and building, he was using the customs tariff paid by Li Yuxi, and now the cost of ironmaking is planning to let Li Yu go west, basically this railway is done by tobacco tycoons.

What made him feel comfortable was that Li Yuxi's attitude was still very good, he simply calculated the cost, and found that Chen Mu did not let him bear the more than 140 million catties of rails, but after expanding the iron factory and building an iron-making furnace, he immediately hugged his fists and said: "Don't worry, Dashuai, I will do my best to bear this matter from the Quanzhou firm under Hexingsheng!" ”